07-23-2012, 07:40 AM | #61 | |
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Harlequin has been selling a *lot* of ebooks. (But not as many as they want to. The indie publishers are eroding their business which is moving *strongly* to ebooks.) The scam, regardless of the amount of money involved is simply a bad business practice; in the current climate they are already losing customers, if they start losing *experienced* authors with established careers and newcomers are warned off they are not going to be industry leaders for long. It doesn't matter if they're saints or devils: They are shooting themselves in the foot for what you, yourself, claim is no significant amount of money. How smart is that? |
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07-23-2012, 02:51 PM | #62 | |
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Perhaps a better analogy is when David Duchovny sued Fox for selling rerun rights to the X-Files to FX, a sister company, for less money than they would have gotten on the open market. This reduced the amount of money he received as his contractual entitlement for such deals. That's basically what the authors are accusing of Harlequin here, but they claim Harlequin far more brazen, and that the Swiss company was basically set up for just this purpose (as well as avoiding taxes). |
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07-23-2012, 04:58 PM | #63 | ||
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You incorrectly stated that "all" Harlequin authors are affected, but that's not the case. It's only people with contracts active between 1999 and 2004 that were sold as ebooks. It's unclear how much is actually at stake. Quote:
They've also been raking it in for the last few years, including increased sales during the recession. They got hit a bit in Q1 of this year, mostly due to drops in print sales, and also due to declines in European sales. As an international company, they're also affected by currency issues. It's also worth mentioning that they are still one of the biggest publishers in the world, and they are still on the wholesale model, instead of pushing for Agency. Most of their books sell for around $4. Yes, obviously they are total bastards, and people are fleeing the brand as a result.... |
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07-23-2012, 05:26 PM | #64 |
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The interesting thing here is that Harlequin should be the darling of the anti BPH crowd. They jumped on ebooks early , their prices are low and their books are (I believe) DRM free-which makes them damn near the perfect publisher, from a Mobile Read POV.
Apparently, it may have achieved some of its success by having its authors enter in some dodgy tax -shelter deal. Oh well... |
07-23-2012, 05:36 PM | #65 | |||
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The plaintiffs are not saying that the contracts were unconscionable. They're saying the correct royalty rate ought to be 50% rather than 3% or 6%. Oh, and yes, a 10% royalty rate may be a bit low, but it's really not that awful. Especially since Harlequin pays halfway decent advances. Quote:
That's hardly an example of "practices frowned upon for years." Quote:
Romance writers blog; prospective and practicing romance authors participate in web forums. Thousands of authors have worked with them, and plenty are willing to talk about their experiences. Even authors who are critical of Harlequin recognize that they have excellent editors, a good art department, high sales volume, pay advances, and do a lot of the sales work for you. |
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07-23-2012, 05:39 PM | #66 |
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07-23-2012, 05:39 PM | #67 |
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I think only the books from their imprint Carina Press are DRM free.
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07-23-2012, 09:21 PM | #68 | |
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If Harlequin had given them the rights for free, would that still be OK? As I understand it, the case is likely to hinge on whether Harlequin were receiving a competitive rate from their subsidiary or could have licensed the rights for substantially more money elsewhere. I have a hard time believing that they couldn't have got more than 6% for those rights from a company which wasn't a subsidiary. |
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07-23-2012, 10:54 PM | #69 | |
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07-23-2012, 11:13 PM | #70 | ||
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07-24-2012, 01:00 AM | #71 | |
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They carved out a niche for themselves by taking an approach most other publishers wouldn't remotely try--subscriptions. This converted to ebooks amazingly well. Most buyers had no idea that the authors were getting paid substantially less than authors signed up with other publishers; the authors didn't notice for a long time, because a fairly prolific Harlequin author could make a decent living, and they knew that most authors couldn't. There was no way to compare publishing deals to find out if a prolific romance author could do better elsewhere; there was no "elsewhere." An author who challenged any aspect of the contract would be frozen out, stuck without a job, sometimes without the right to continue using their name on future books. Now... authors have other career options, and that brings with it the power to seek reparations for the harms done to them. Even if the lawsuit's not successful, they're not throwing away their future careers to be part of it. |
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07-24-2012, 01:56 AM | #72 | |
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Over 30 k$ for three months of work doesn't sound like a miserable salary to me, and I think that apart from the top 2% or 3% most (aspiring) authors would go for it. |
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07-24-2012, 07:48 AM | #73 | |||
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The only authors that do better, really, are the ones that sign with one of the Big 6. And they probably don't have nearly as many authors on their payroll. By the way, Brenda Hiatt has done a survey of romance payouts since 2001. There's actually quite a bit of info out there about writing for Harlequin. Quote:
Harlequin does not negotiate contracts -- as one might expect for a genre company that publishes 120 titles a month. (By the way, Harlequin reverts rights to the authors after 5-7 years, unless they are reprinted.) If you don't adhere to the terms of any contract, there are going to be some consequences. Harlequin does not control pseudonyms. There's no problem if you want to switch to another publisher once you've fulfilled your obligations. Quote:
This has nothing to do with authors allegedly fleeing for self-publishing (something that doesn't seem to be the case). It's about ebook royalties for books published between 1999 and 2004, that were sold as ebooks. Since Harlequin in 2012 gets around 13% of its revenues from ebooks, you might want to moderate those sweeping claims. |
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07-24-2012, 09:52 AM | #74 | |
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Which may have been legal (we're about to find out, for some of it), but was still less than other genre contracts. Twenty years ago, there was pretty much no other option for those authors; now there is. |
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07-24-2012, 10:28 AM | #75 | |
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In reality, of course, many romance writers would like to write for Harlequin so as to take advantage of its wonderful brand and guaranteed payment. They would prefer not to be stuck out in the wilderness of Smashwords, toiling in obscurity beside 100,000 amateurs. It's one of the reasons why aspiring writers would agree to "unfair" contact terms with Harlequin. The self pub alternative is often worse. |
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